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Who Got Rich This Week: A Snack Cake Baker, A Picture Taker And More

Each week at Forbes we scan our database of corporate insiders to see who got richer from the action in the stock market. In a week over which the S&P 500 was virtually flat, big winners were relatively hard to come by. With investors nervously awaiting the fate of Cyprus, the world’s 125th largest economy, and growing wary of the market’s recent historic heights, the rally of 2013 took a clear pause. But whether you were taking profits or anxiously looking for an entry point, chances are you didn’t have as good of a week as the men below. Here, some of the biggest gainers over the past seven days:

Picture This

When we last checked in on Shutterstock founder and CEO Jon Oringer in October 2012, his company had only been publicly traded for a week. Over that short period, however, Oringer had already booked $137.7 million in paper gains. Shutterstock hasn’t looked back since. The stock is now trading 153% above its $17 per share offering price, which itself was well above the original projected offering range of $13 to $15 per share. All told, Oringer’s Shutterstock stake is nearly $500 million more valuable today than it was at the time of the firm’s IPO. Oringer, a serial entrepreneur, founded Shutterstock in 2003 to solve a problem that came up again and again in his ventures: he could never find quality yet affordable art and photographs to use in his websites and marketing literature. Today, his answer to that problem, Shutterstock, serves as a marketplace for the buying and selling of nearly 25 million stock images. Shutterstock shares rose another 10.1% this week, making Oringer another $73 million richer. His stake in the company is now worth $794.5 million.

Tasty

Can’t wait until this summer for C. Dean Metropoulos to get Hostess snacks back on store shelves? Try picking up some Tastykakes. With a distinct, yet familiar lineup, the brand’s Swiss Rolls, Honey Buns and Chocolate Bells should hold you over until Twinkies return. Unfortunately for some however, and unbeknownst to me until today, Tastykake’s products are only available in the eastern half of the United States. Fortunately for C. Martin Wood III, the maker of Tastykakes, Flowers Foods, is trading 8.4% higher over last week. Wood, who served as CFO of Flowers from 1978 until 2000, owns some 3.5 million shares of the baked goods producer. Flowers was the winning bidder for Hostess’ Wonder bread brand, agreeing to pay $360 million for the majority of the defunct baker’s bread business. Thanks to the recent uptick, Wood’s Flowers shares are now worth $109.7 million, $8.5 million more than they were worth a week ago.

For Real Rich

Not even Carlos Slim Helu, the richest man in the world, could keep pace with Nike founder and chairman Phil Knight during Friday’s trading session. Amongst the 50 billionaires whose wealth Forbes tracks in real time, Knight ended the day squarely atop the heap, with a paper gain of $1.04 billion thanks to an 11.06% rise in the price of Nike shares. The bump came after Nike announced quarterly earnings that were 16% higher than the same period last year. At 73 cents per share, the athletic apparel maker’s net income soundly beat the 67 cents per share expected by Wall Street. Though Slim booked a gain of $760.46 million on his America Movil holdings, the Mexican telecom titan ended the day up just $192.1 million due to his stake in Minera Frisco, which was down 1.7%. Leading the day’s losers was Larry Ellison, whose lieutenant, Mark Hurd, may be poached by Blackstone to run Dell in the event of a takeover by the private equity giant. The Oracle CEO’s fortune fell by $333.74 million as Oracle shares lost .93% on the session.

Thanks to Scott DeCarlo for building and maintaining our insider database screen.

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